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Vast Conspiracy or Widespread Conspiracism?

Conspiracist movements in the US are dedicated to the proposition that
common citizens are held down by a small network of secret elites manipulating
a vast legion of corrupt politicians, mendacious journalists, propagandizing
schoolteachers, and nefarious bankers. This conspiracist subculture has
a long historical pedigree, and makes a periodic appearance on the US political
scene, usually accompanying a right-wing populist upsurge such as the country
is currently experiencing.175 Conspiracism
is not merely a marginal "extremist" phenomenon, but is deeply
imbedded in our culture. There is an entrenched network of conspiracy-mongering
information outlets spreading dubious stories about Clinton and other public
figures and institutions through printed matter, the internet, fax trees,
radio programs, and video/audio tapes.176

As the political scene shifted to the right over the past twenty years,
and the culture of conspiracism spread into prime time, the apocalyptic
prophets of the right-wing paranoid style reintegrated themselves into
the Republican Party.177 The conspiracist
wing of the Republican right had been pushed back following the disgrace
of Senator Joseph McCarthy and his reign of error and false accusation,
and again after the Barry Goldwater campaign where their alarmist charges
about Lyndon Johnson and liberalism helped make Goldwater's candidacy a
dud.178 Academic studies have shown
that conspiracist groups on the right such as the John Birch Society are
not "marginal" to the electoral process, but have members with
above average income, status, and education who are often long-term activists
within the Republican Party.179

An unnerving number of our fellow citizens have seen symptoms of secret
conspiracies afoot during the 1990's. These include restrictions on gun
ownership, government abuse of power, federal health and safety regulations,
abortion, homosexuality, the feminist movement, sex education, new age
spirituality, modern educational curricula, environmentalism, rock or rap
music, to name just a few. The conspirators were many: politicians and
law enforcement officials above county level, game wardens, internal revenue
agents, judges, lawyers, bankers, journalists, unionists, leftists, the
Rockefellers, the UN, Trilateralist Commission, Bilderberger banking discussion
group, Council on Foreign Relations, Federal Reserve bank officials, Jews,
Blacks, Latinos, Arabs, and Asians.

Anti-Clinton advocates in the conspiracist subculture can be found in
groups that range across the political spectrum and incorporate both secular
and religious motifs. Dubious allegations of wrongdoing appeared in media
ranging from publications of the hard right patriot and armed militia movements
to more mainstream information sources. A number of alarming allegations
came from people who in some way were funded or encouraged by ultraconservative
activist and millionaire Richard Mellon Scaife.

The resurgence of the conspiracist subculture created a political constituency
that supports official investigations such as those of special prosecutor
Kenneth Starr into claims of Clinton wrongdoing. During the Cold War, Starr's
political patron, Jesse Helms, was in the forefront of purveying conspiracist
allegations of a global "red menace" allied with domestic subversives
to undermine the US. Those who are immersed in this hard right conspiracist
discourse frequently believe that liberals are engaged in criminal conspiracies.
The charges against Clinton were influenced by historic right-wing conspiracist
theories linking liberalism, sexual immorality, statist intrusion, collectivism,
and treason.